go 1.5 : Is “go install” behaviour changed? Removing stale executables?

Question

Till Go 1.4.2 when i run go install after running go build, i could find binary file in my current folder. Hence following Linux command was working

$ go build && go install && ./executable

But after installing go 1.5, when i run same command i get,

-bash: ./executable: No such file or directory

and when i checked, there is no executable to find. Did go install behavior changed in Go 1.5?

Answer 1

Yes, the behaviour has changed in Go 1.5:

If 'go install' (with no arguments, meaning the current directory) succeeds, remove the executable written by 'go build', if present. This avoids leaving a stale binary behind during a sequence like:

 go build <test, mostly works, make small change> go install 

Before this CL, the current directory still has the stale binary from 'go build'. If $PATH contains dot, running the name of the program will find this stale binary instead of the new, installed one.

I can't find anything mentioning that in the release notes though. Might be a documentation issue.

It seems like the solution is to use the binary that go install has produced.

EDIT: Here is the issue on the Go issue tracker if you want to follow on updates. Should be fixed by 1.5.1.